Thursday, March 31, 2011

Students who want to participate in the Google Summer of Code project
this year should apply online now! The deadline for applications is
April 8, but the load on the servers increases as that date
approaches, so apply now to avoid the rush and make sure your
application is received in time.

Google Summer of Code

Since 2005, the Python Software Foundation has been sponsoring Google
Summer of Code (GSoC) projects to pair students with mentors from
Python-based projects for real-world development experience. Students
who are accepted into the program will spend the summer working on an
open source project in Python, and be paid US$5,000 if the project is
completed.

Projects

In addition to the mentors from the core Python team, several umbrella
teams are already involved with the PSF for GSoC. Details about the
proposed project ideas and prospective mentors can be found on the
wiki.

Increasing Diversity

The PSF is committed to increasing the diversity of the Python
community. One way we are working toward that goal is by encouraging
women and other minorities to apply to participate in GSoC through one
of the PSF-sponsored projects. The Mailman, SciPy, and PySoy
projects are especially active in seeking minority applicants this
year.

Important Dates

Student application deadline: 8 April

Students and Mentors paired up: 22 April

Announce accepted Students: 25 April

For more details about the schedule, see the GSoC timeline on the
project web site.

Updated: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that
students could earn US$4,500 instead of US$5,000.

Monday, March 28, 2011

A year ago Will Kahn-Greene started the Python Miro Community, a
web-site that indexes Python-related videos regardless of where those
videos exist on the Internet. The PSF has provided US$1,800 to
finance continuation of this work, including US$900 for one year of
Miro Community service costs. The remainder of the grant will go
toward further development of the Python Miro Community.

Miro Community

The Miro Community offers an easy way to collect and curate videos
already on the internet. It is one of several projects of the
non-profit organization Participatory Culture Foundation all
centered around supporting distribution of video content on the
Internet. Among these is Universal Subtitles, a toolset and
community to add subtitles to any web video.
The Python Miro Community indexes Python-related videos from many
separate hosting sites on the Internet. The collection includes
metadata for the videos to make them searchable and more useful to
people. The site currently holds around 550 videos, covering a wide
variety of Python-related topics from Python user groups,
Python-related conferences like PyCon, and other sources.

Funding usage

US$900 of the grant will go towards Miro Community service costs as
PCF rolls out Miro Community 1.2, which has a tiered service plan.
The other US$900 of the grant will go towards improvements to Python
Miro Community:

Thursday, March 24, 2011

SciPy 2011, the 10th Python in Science conference, will be held July 11 - 16, 2011, in Austin, TX.

At this conference, novel applications and breakthroughs made in the pursuit of science using Python are presented.
The conference is preceded by two days of tutorials, during which community experts provide training on several scientific Python packages.

Potential speakers are invited to take part by submitting a talk abstract at the conference website.
Associated papers (optional) are included in the peer-reviewed conference proceedings, to be published online.

This year will also feature two specialized tracks, whose express aim it is to open up SciPy to the broader Python community.
The first track is Python in Data Science chaired by Peter Wang, and
the second is entitled Python and Core Technologies chaired by Anthony Scopatz.

Videos from this year's edition of PyCon are being uploaded and some are already available on
Python's Miro Community page and on Blip TV. All presentations this year were of high caliber
and the diversity will please everyone interested in Python. If you missed the conference, or just one or two presentations that you really wanted to see, check out the videos today!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Python Insider is the official blog of the Python core
development team. It will provide a way for people who don't follow
the mailing list to get an overview of topics discussed there, and
especially to learn about changes in store for Python.

The announcement includes details about how to subscribe to the
blog through its RSS feed, email, and Twitter.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Since 2005, the Python Software Foundation has been sponsoring Google
Summer of Code (GSoC) projects to pair students with mentors from
Python-based projects for real-world development experience. We are
pleased to announce that the PSF is a GSoC sponsoring organization
again for 2011!

Call for Applications

The PSF is accepting proposals from different projects in the Python
ecosystem. In order to qualify for PSF sponsorship, projects must be
prepared to provide at least three mentors to act as guides for
students over the course of the summer. Projects also need a
well-defined method of team communication, such as a mailing list or
dedicated IRC channel.

In addition to the mentors from the core Python team, several umbrella
teams are already involved with the PSF for GSoC. They include:

The number of student positions available for PSF projects is based on
the number of project applications received during this phase of the
program. So if your project could benefit from participating in GSoC,
submit an application!

Students

Currently, the PSF is only accepting proposals from different
projects in the Python ecosystem. However, it is never too early for
students to be involved!

Students may submit to their GSoC application to the PSF from March
28th - April 8th. Please see the GSoC timeline for the complete
program schedule. We encourage students to find a project they are
interested in working with before the application period opens.
Sending an inquiry to the project's mailing list asking where help is
needed is highly recommended.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

The PSF Board of Directors has awarded a $1500 USD grant to sponsor
PyCon AU.

Date and Location

PyCon Australia 2011 will be held in Sydney on the weekend of the 20th
and 21st of August in Sydney, Australia. The Call for Proposals has
already been sent out.

PyCon AU

Australian Python programming enthusiasts are continuing the global
PyCon tradition in Sydney. This will be the second Australian PyCon
event, and the organizers anticipate 250 participants. The schedule
will include dozens of presentations on topics including web
programming, business applications, game development, science and
mathematics, social issues, education, testing, databases,
documentation and more.

Monday, March 14, 2011

The PSF Sprints Committee has sent out a call for applications from
groups who want funding to host sprints on Python-related development
work.

Sprints Committee

The Sprints Committee was established in June 2010 to
encourage and assist groups to come together to work on Python-related
projects. The committee has successfully funded a number of sprints
since it was created, and the PSF Board of Directors has recently set
aside additional funding to be used for sprinting during the upcoming
year.

Sprint Topics

Sprints on any topic related to Python may qualify for a grant. Groups
can work on any of the interpreters (CPython, PyPy, Jython,
IronPython, etc.), modules from the standard library, third-party
libraries, development tools, or anything else affecting the
community.

Sponsored sprints have covered topics including porting Genshi to
Python 3, improvements to packaging as part of the
Distribute/distutils project, and most recently, the PyPy winter
sprint in Switzerland. Check out the sprints blog for more
details.

Assistance

The Sprints Committee has prepared guides for sprinting on Python
core and porting
to Python 3 to
help make your event successful. In addition to organizational
support, the committee can also offer financial assistance in the form
of grants.

Any sprint group can apply for a grant from to cover expenses directly
related to a sprint event. That includes buying meals, renting meeting
space, and other reasonable expenses. The maximum grant for an event
is US$300.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

The PSF is preparing its submission to participate in the Google
Summer of Code again this year. The first step in that process is to
solicit applications from projects that want to participate, and the
call for submissions is now officially open.

Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) offers stipends to college students who
write code for open source software projects. The program works by
pairing students with mentors from participating projects to benefit
both groups. Students are exposed to real-world software development
practices, and the mentoring projects gain new contributors. More
than 4,500 students and 4,000 mentors have participated in the program
since its beginning in 2005. Contributions have come from over 85
countries around the world, making GSoC a truely global effort to
improve the state of open source software.

Requirements for Participating Projects

Although any project is able to apply to participate directly in the
Google Summer of Code, the application period with Google is closed
for this year. Fortunately, the PSF also sponsors Python-related
projects that need an umbrella organization to assist with the
administration work for GSoC. In order to qualify for PSF sponsorship,
projects must be prepared to provide at least three mentors to act as
guides for students over the course of the summer. Projects also needs
a well-defined method of team communication, such as a mailing list or
dedicated IRC channel.

Friday, March 11, 2011

The site for PyCon 2014 and 2015 has not been set, yet. If you want your city to be considered, attend the Site Selection Meeting in the Dunwoody room at PyCon 2011 during the Sunday lunch break. Tell us why your city should be the next host of the premier Python conference in North America.

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

The PSF Board has awarded a grant of USD $840 to the Read the Docs
project for twelve months of hosting fees.

Read the Docs

Created by Eric Holscher, Charles Leifer, and Bobby Grace,
readthedocs.org is a documentation hosting site born out of the 2010
Django Dash competition. The site monitors git, Mercurial, and
Subversion source repositories and automatically builds a project's
documentation using Sphinx. Users can also create documentation
directly through the site using a built-in editor.

The code for Read the Docs is itself open source, and contributions
from users and other interested parties are always welcome.

Monday, March 07, 2011

A new PSF project aims to create professional quality promotional
material about Python. The first goal is to create a brochure to
showcase the many ways Python is used. It will include use cases to
highlight the ways the language allows users to accomplish their tasks
both in educational and in professional settings.

Project team members Marc-André Lemburg, Jan Ulrich Hasecke, and Armin
Stross-Radschinski created this Plone marketing brochure for the
German Zope User Group. It is the inspiration for this new project.

Community feedback and awareness is vitally important for the success
of this initiative, mainly to gather information to be used in the
brochure. We are especially looking for interesting projects that can
be discussed as use-cases.

If you have any suggestions for information to include in the
brochure, please contact Marc-André Lemburg or send an email to brochure AT getpython DOT info.

UPDATE: more information about the brochure, including a newsletter, can be found here.